Chapter 2 - SECRETS IN THE DARKMy breath hitched in my throat. I pressed my back hard against the shivering wooden door, my eyes frantically straining to pierce the pitch-black shadows of the cabin's far corner.
"Who... who's there?" I choked out, holding up a jagged piece of wood I picked up from the floor as a makeshift weapon.
Outside, the lioness slammed her massive weight against the door again. THUMP! The ancient hinges groaned, but held. Outside, the rain began to pour in torrential sheets, drowning out the sounds of the wilderness.
A figure slowly emerged from the gloom. It was a young man, no older than twenty-five, wearing a torn camouflage jacket. His face was smeared with dirt and dried blood, his eyes wide with absolute, unadulterated terror. In his trembling hands, he held a radio transmitter with a broken antenna.
"You shouldn't have come in here," he whispered, his voice shaking. "She's not just hunting you because of the cub."
"What are you talking about?" I demanded, wiping blood from a scrape on my forehead. "She's a wild animal protecting her baby!"
The man shook his head rapidly, tears cutting clean streaks through the dirt on his cheeks. "That's not a normal lioness. And those aren't normal woods. My name is Leo... I was part of the research team up at the top station."
My stomach sank. The top station was an off-limits facility high up in the reserve, rumored to be an abandoned weather post.
"Research team?" I asked, my grip tightening on the wooden stake. "What kind of research?"
Leo swallowed hard, glancing nervously toward the cabin's broken window, which was barred with heavy iron grates. "They were testing experimental nerve toxins and behavioral modifiers on apex predators. They wanted to create aggressive territorial deterrents for private military zones. But three days ago... something went horribly wrong. An explosion breached the containment unit."
The air in the room felt suddenly ice-cold.
"They released her?" I whispered in horror.
"She escaped," Leo corrected, his voice dropping to an eerie hush. "And the chemical compound she was exposed to didn't just make her hyper-aggressive... it heightened her senses and heightened her memory. She doesn't just hunt on instinct anymore. She hunts with intent. She killed my whole team. I'm the only one left."
Before I could digest his horrific confession, the heavy slamming against the front door suddenly stopped.
The silence that followed was far worse than the noise. The wind howled outside, driving rain against the roof, but the lioness had ceased her assault.
"Is she... gone?" I whispered, taking a cautious step forward.
"No," Leo breathed, his eyes wide with horror as he looked past my shoulder toward the ceiling. "She doesn't give up."
I slowly looked up.
Above us, the wooden ceiling beams were creaking under enormous weight. The beast hadn't left—she had climbed onto the rotting roof.
CRACK!
A section of the roof caved in. Dust, wood splinters, and torrential rain showered down on us, followed by a terrifying roar. Through the newly formed hole in the ceiling, a pair of glowing yellow eyes stared down into the cabin.
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And then, she leaped down right between us.
🔥 FACEBOOK HOOK: The lioness was a subject of a deadly lab experiment! Trapped inside a tiny cabin with an altered monster, can they survive the night?
